THE RAGMAN! DO 1833 4/7/84
1. WHEN ARE YOU GUYS EVER GOING TO LEARN HOW TO PINCH EVERY PENNY? That's what I'm after & doing right now, pinching pennies! You guys get high-falutin' ideas, "Oh, it doesn't matter how much money we spend. We can spend several dollars on postage, so what? Sprint can print us extra personal copies & it doesn't matter how much it costs!" To me, it does!--It's that much more trouble! It means extra labelling, packaging, etc.
2. WHO IS GOING TO RUN THIS OUTFIT ONE OF THESE DAYS WHEN I'M GONE? WHO IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF THESE THINGS & NOTICE THESE LITTLE THINGS? You might say, "Well, why bother over every pinched penny? We're only talking about a few extra packages & a few copies & a few pennies." Well, the Lord tested me for 49 years on pennies before He started trusting me with dollars. When He found He could trust me with pennies, then He started pouring on the dollars, because He knew if I was really careful to pinch the pennies I would certainly pinch the dollars!
3. I CAN'T UNDERSTAND HOW UNCONCERNED YOU ARE ABOUT EXPENSES!--How unconcerned you are about Sprint's trouble & the work they're doing. I'm trying to lighten their load all we can so I can give them some more!--That's what it amounts to. The more we save, the more we can spend! Don't you understand that?
4. AND ANOTHER THING--NOT KNOWING THE POSTAGE ON THE LETTERS OR PACKAGES YOU RECEIVE IS LIKE HAVING PEOPLE TOSS YOU MONEY & NOT EVEN COUNTING IT OR NOT EVEN KNOWING HOW MUCH YOU GET! That's just like not asking the prices of anything, you just go buy it. They tell you how much it is & you don't even pay attention. I figure you must not be interested in the price if you don't know what you paid for it & it didn't even make enough of an impression on you to even remember!
5. YOU'RE GOING TO FIND OUT THAT I DON'T PAY FOR ANYTHING THAT I DON'T USUALLY REMEMBER HOW MUCH I PAID FOR IT! I think you know that by this time. How are you fellows going to run this outfit after I'm gone if you don't pay any attention to what you pay for things, you don't even ask the price! That means you don't even care! That's what it shows me. I realise it is not the responsibility of everyone in the Home how much Sprint pays for it, but it seems like our Homes would at least be curious to see those pretty stamps!
6. SOMEBODY OUGHT TO BE COLLECTING STAMPS, BECAUSE OURFAMILY GETS STAMPS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD! I used to collect stamps, & then I used to collect stamps even later for other people. We used to collect stamps for our kids. Stamps are worth money! Who collects stamps in this house? Who collects them from the packages? Let me tell you, stamps are worth something! You can make money off of stamps, especially the older they get, & you can even go down & sell them. I don't know about other places, but in the United States & England, no matter what they are you can sell them by the pound! I wonder how many stamps & how much worth we have received that we haven't saved!
7. WELL, I CAN'T THINK OF EVERYTHING, BUT IT SEEMS I USUALLY DO, & I HAVE TO BECAUSE NOBODY ELSE DOES! Now I don't want to see a stamp wasted that comes in here! You don't have to stop & soak it off--the kids can do that, I used to do that--all you have to do is tear off the corner of the envelope & throw it in a pot or wastebasket or a special container that you keep'm in. It's not that much of a problem to do that.
8. I WANT TO TEACH OUR KIDS THE VALUE OF THINGS, IF THEY DON'T LEARN IT ANY OTHER WAY THAN BY SAVING STAMPS! Besides, it's quite an education, very interesting. I used to have a big huge book full of 5,000 stamps, & when I quit saving stamps or being interested in it & wanted to build radios instead because I thought I could make more money on radios, I stopped saving stamps & made radios instead. So I sold my collection of 5,000 stamps in the middle of the Depression when you could hardly sell anything for any amount of money, but one rich boy was willing to give me $5 for my book of stamps.--And that was a lot of money, Brother!--A lot of money! With that much money I could build five radios & then I could sell them to people for twice that much!
9. I DIDN'T GET HERE JUST BY FIDDLING AROUND DOING NOTHING! I've been working since I was a little kid & I've been working saving money & making money since I was a little kid & learning the value of a dollar & the value of labour, hard work & doing something & saving pennies & pinching pennies. My Grandfather's favourite motto was: "A penny saved is a penny earned!" My Mother used to say about him, that though he was a millionaire, he could squeeze a dollar till the eagle screamed!--And those were silver dollars at that, & they were worth something! I don't even know if they've got eagles on the paper ones, but you could make George Washington scream anyhow!
10. SO IF IT IS NOTHING ELSE BUT A LESSON TO TEACH KIDS THE VALUE OF THINGS, GIVE THEM ALL THE COVERS & LET THEM TEAR OFF THE STAMPS. Have a special wastebasket that the trashman knows is not a wastebasket, & throw all the covers into that basket. In stamp collecting people collect anything & some covers are worth even more than stamps now! If you have an old letter from years & years ago originally stamped, that is worth a lot of money, the envelope along with the stamp. Those are what they call covers. And it's especially valuable if it is mailed from some place important like Timbuktu, Oshkosh or the top of the Empire State Building or the bottom of the U.N. or the Vatican or some place like that! They even save the cover or the name & address of the person, the whole works! Well, I didn't realise this was turning out to be a lesson on how to save & pinch pennies & learn the value of not just dollars, but pennies!
11. IF YOU NEVER LEARN THE VALUE OF PENNIES, YOU'LL NEVER LEARN THE VALUE OF DOLLARS! When you lose your sense of values & people find out you don't even care what things cost or how much they cost, then you must not be very much interested. If you don't even ask the price of things & you're not even curious about the price, that means to any seller that you've got lots of money & he can stick you with any kind of price, because you don't care what you have to pay for it, you don't even ask what the price is!
12. YOU NEED TO START ASKING FIRST WHAT THE PRICE IS TO SHOW THAT THE PRICE IS IMPORTANT TO YOU & IT MEANS SOMETHING & YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PRICE so that he won't hike the price on you & figure, "Well, you don't seem to know what the price is anyway or care" so he gives you a high price. If right away when you see it your first question is, "How much?", then what are you telling him?--That the price is important! If it's your first question, you're virtually telling him that the price is the most important thing about it.--Even though it may not be to you, but you want to give him that impression.
13. I WANT TO TEACH YOU GUYS SOMETHING ABOUT BUYING THINGS! I used to buy & I was poor, & I'll tell you, every penny counted! The price is important & you should let any seller or somebody you are buying things from know first thing that the price may affect his sale. So he is going to set his first asking price down as low as, you might say, "this finicky penny-pinching guy might take," & then you can [EDITED: "bargain"] him down from there on. [DELETED]
14. IN PLACES LIKE THE STATES & FRANCE, ETC., NOW IT IS ILLEGAL TO SAY ANYTHING AGAINST THE JEWS! [DELETED] It's against the law! You can say anything you want against Christians or Catholics or probably even Negroes or whatnot, but [DELETED] it is against the law to say anything against the Jews! Think of that!--They call it racism, discrimination, libel, slander or whatever. They have a whole Jewish organisation that they call the Anti-Defamation League. [DELETED]
15. THEY'VE ALSO GOT THEIR OWN TERRORIST ORGANISATION NOW, THE JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE, JDL. They deplore terrorists, they hate terrorists, they constantly blast terrorists & they criticise terrorists & they're campaigning Worldwide against terrorism!--Every kind of terrorism but [EDITED: "their organization's own"]! They want to be the only terrorists! [DELETED]
16. THE AMERICANS NEVER EVEN HEARD OF TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS & THAT KIND OF DIRTY WORK where they shoot policemen in the back & then torture people & mow innocent civilians down just for the sake of killing people who happen to be of a certain nationality or on the other side, because they're either English or Arabs, or blow bombs up in a hotel & kill hundreds of innocent civilians. You know the first I ever heard of that kind of terrorism, where it came from?--From Israel, the Jews! They blew up the King David Hotel & killed over 200 people, as I recall, & injured hundreds, most of them innocent civilians that didn't have anything to do with it, just because they were British.
17. [DELETED] BUT GOD HELP US!--AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU DON'T [DELETED] PINCH PENNIES & KNOW WHERE THE MONEY GOES & HOW MUCH & WHY & WHAT FOR! I'm more like that Jew in that story I told you about the beer, remember? You know the Englishman, the Scotsman & the Jew, each one got a fly in his beer at the bar--there must've been a lot of flies buzzin' around--so the Englishman, he flicked his out, & when you do that you lose a little beer with it. The Scotsman was a little more careful, he blew his out, & that doesn't lose so much beer. But the Jew, do you know what he did? He picked his fly out & wrung it out so that he didn't lose any beer!--Like you wring out your clothes & the water comes out of the clothes & goes back in the bucket or whatever. Well, the beer that the fly had absorbed, he wrung it out & wrung that beer back into his beer. Gulp! Uck! Well, I don't know whether that's a true story or not, it's a little doubtful, but that's just about [DELETED] how Jewish I am & how saving I am!
18. YOU SAY, "MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, DAD! IT'S JUST A FEW PENNIES. And after all, we pay Sprint, why shouldn't they work? They've got their own budget, why not?" That's the way some employers figure: "So what? What if it is more labour? I'm already paying for it. I don't care how hard I work my employees, I don't care if they have to work their fingers to the bone, I'm paying them anyhow so let them work themselves to death!" Well, they don't want to work them to death, just close to it so they can get all the work out of them they can for the least amount of money, especially in some countries.
19. WELL, I DON'T BELIEVE IN THAT BECAUSE GOD DOESN'T BELIEVE IN THAT! I BELIEVE IN SAVING OUR LABOURERS! I believe God's man is precious to the Lord & more valuable than his money. And if you're going to say, "Well, we save a few pennies, so what? They've got the machine & they can print a few more & it won't be that much trouble, why not?" As far as I'm concerned, every copy, every page, any sheet of anything that we have them print that they don't have to print is too many!
20. I BELIEVE IN SAVING OUR LABOURERS MORE THAN THE MONEY, BELIEVE IT OR NOT! Strange employer! But as far as I'm concerned, our manpower & our personnel are far more valuable than money. Money is easy to get, God can drop it out of the sky, He can rain it down from Heaven or whatever, if necessary. After all, the government just prints it by the billions on the printing press, like in the U.S.A. It's not even worth the paper it's printing on! So why couldn't God print a few extra for us? Money has no will of its own, it's not a creature with a will & determination & choice. It's people that are hard to get! It's people that have a stubborn will & are difficult to persuade to make a decision to serve the Lord.
21. SO OUR MANPOWER IS THE MOST VALUABLE THING WE HAVE! Our precious souls are the most valuable thing there is in this whole World to the Lord! There is nothing in this World more precious or valuable to the Lord than a priceless, immortal soul!--Every single one, both the saved & the unsaved. He's glad for the saved but He's also working hard & having us work hard to get the unsaved.
22. SO THE LABOURER IS WORTH SOMETHING, & TO SAY, "OH WELL, IT'S JUST A FEW MORE COPIES, SO WHAT?"--WELL, YOU START ADDING THAT UP! A few more copies & a few more copies & a few more copies every week, months go by & years & I wonder how much we have had Sprint do that maybe they didn't even have to do! And the point is, I wonder how much more they could have done for somebody that needed it that they had to do for us. Now thank God we haven't had many printed copies & I grant you it is a very small amount both of copies & of money, but if you don't learn the value of those small amounts, how is God ever going to trust you with the big ones?
23. I LEARNED SOMETHING NEW THE OTHER DAY THAT I DIDN'T REALISE IN ONE OF THOSE STORIES WHERE THE LORD WAS TALKING ABOUT TALENTS. When I looked it up & saw how much the talent was worth, 104 pounds of gold, worth half-a-million dollars, no wonder He was worried about it! But in the other story when He turned around & gave the guys what they had earned & gave them the equivalent number of cities to rule over, He wasn't even talking about talents, 104 pounds of gold each, He was just talking about pounds! Can you remember how much I figured out a pound was? It was so astonishing to me to figure out how much a pound was. I'll bet every one of you read those stories, like me, & never realised in one parable He was talking about talents (Mat.25) & in another pounds & cities (Luk.19) until I looked it up. I couldn't understand why I couldn't find where He said about giving these guys cities. They'd gone out & invested His money & doubled it, so He gave them an equivalent number of cities, probably just as a test to see how much they valued what He gave them. (Luk.19:12-27)
24. IF THEY TOOK ONE POUND & MADE TWO POUNDS OUT OF IT, HE FIGURED THEY COULD BE TRUSTED WITH NOT ONE CITY, BUT TWO CITIES! If they took five & made 10, he gave them 10 cities or whatever it was. I have a hard time remembering because I never got the distinction before in the story about giving the guys cities, which I wanted to give you as an illustration about the Millennium, how He is going to give you whole cities to rule over! He was only talking about pounds, just a small fraction of a talent. Well, we figured up how much it was worth in gold & it was in a recent GN. (See "Millennial Prep," No.1780 in GN No.144) I think it was several thousand dollars. But anyhow, it was only a fraction of a talent, & yet He gave these guys whole cities to rule over because they were scrupulous & careful & prayerful & diligent & worked hard to double what He gave them. He figured if they could do that with a little pound, then He could give them more. If He can trust you with a pound, He can trust you with cities, & that's the way it looks to the Lord.
25. IF YOU THINK I'M STRAINING AT A GNAT & SWALLOWING CAMELS, WELL, I'LL SWALLOW A CAMEL IF IT'S WORTH IT, BUT I'LL STRAIN AT A GNAT IF IT'S WORTH IT & I WANT YOU FELLOWS TO LEARN THAT! I would say that a certain part of your training has been sadly neglected & you have really missed the boat if I haven't taught you how to value pennies! Peter is learning, thank God! We learned how even a fraction-of-a-cent counts up on a mailing when we have to send out thousands of copies to hundreds & hundreds of Homes, thousands of people. When you multiply it all up, even if it starts out as a fraction of cent, it mounts up!
26. YOU SAY, "WELL THEN WHY ARE YOU GOING INTO THIS MORE EXPENSIVE FORMAT & USING HEAVIER PAPER WHICH COSTS MORE MONEY & MORE POSTAGE, COSTS MORE EVERYTHING, IN THIS CASE EVEN MORE WORK FOR THE POOR SPRINT TEAM. How come? We're going in for a new format, a new kind of mailing & more postage. I thought you were so saving, Dad, you're so careful with the pennies & here you're going in for this big deal of a different format, a big format, all kinds of stuff that is going to cost us more money. I thought you were interested in saving money. Why?"--Security! I'm more interested in saving people, & if those mailings are going to endanger their lives or their security or their safety or their freedom, then the new format is worth more than any amount of money in the World! Whatever it takes for us to make those mailings more secure & safer & less dangerous & hazardous for them to pick up at the post office or receive in the mail, then I think we ought to do it! (The new Letter-size GN.)
27. FOR AWHILE WE WERE POURING OUT THE PUBS & WE WERE DOING EVERYTHING WE COULD TO SAVE MONEY, BUT NOW AS THE SITUATION IS GETTING TIGHTER IN A LOT OF PLACES I'M THINKING MORE ABOUT SAVING ON SECURITY EVEN IF IT COSTS MORE MONEY!--And not only because it is already getting tighter, but because it is going to get tighter still, & I always believe in getting the jump on the other guy. I believe in jumping the gun if I can get away with it & start now so that we won't be caught unprepared & flat-footed & have to do all this after the boom is already lowered! We will be in the swim & the machine will be operating beautifully, we hope, & the system operating perfectly & everything running smoothly because we have already done it & already learned it & it is already in operation & we're already on tight security & already packaging things more securely, not only sealed but less noticeable.
28. IT WILL LOOK MORE LIKE A LETTER THAN A PACKAGE OR A PUBLICATION & WILL NOT HAVE PRINTED RIGHT ON THE OUTSIDE THAT IT IS PRINTED MATTER. Of course, in a lot of countries in the World I guess they don't care, but in countries like the United States & the more civilised & developed countries where they are supposed to do things pretty legally, they are not allowed to open a First Class or Airmail letter unless they've got some kind of law whereby they have to open it. And in that case they usually require some kind of law or court order to open your mail. They can't any more open your mail box than they can tap your phone without the authority to do so.
29. THAT'S WHEN WE LEFT ISRAEL, WHEN THEY OPENED OUR MAIL! The first letter we got back from Joel, of all people, telling me how to create a [EDITED: "spiritual"] Revolution that would take over the World--ahem, he was telling me, mind you, using all these wild terms in this letter--that happened to be the one that the censors, the Mossad, opened in Israel, the Secret Service there! Apparently I was getting all these letters from all parts of the World & they got curious about who I was & how come I was getting so much international mail, so they opened one letter. I suppose they did it legally, because they put scotch tape on it & sealed it up & stamped it that it had been opened by the postal inspectors. [DELETED]
30. [DELETED] We'd already found out that to go down & renew our three-month visa you practically had to give your life history & rake up friends & references & everything else locally, & they had to have interviews with you & with your contacts & everybody to find out why you wanted to stay another three months & why three months wasn't a good enough vacation in Israel. If you wanted to stay longer they suspected you of being a spy! One poor old man 78 years old got arrested & put in jail for six months just for taking snapshots of the Haifa Harbour!--A tourist who didn't know that there were certain installations there that you weren't supposed to take pictures of. It happened while we were in Israel.
31. THEY ACCUSED HIM OF BEING A POSSIBLE SPY & THAT HE WAS POSSIBLY CONNECTED WITH ARAB INTELLIGENCE. They didn't let him go until after six months when they proved to themselves, I'm sure, that he wasn't a spy & it socked a good heavy warning to all other tourists! They didn't care if he was 78, he couldn't take snapshots of security installations! I don't blame them much for that, I wouldn't want people breaking our security either, but that is pretty cruel, if you ask me, taking a 78-year-old tourist away from his old aged wife just on a trip to Israel because he accidentally took a few snapshots of security installations that happened to be on this beautiful bay of Haifa Harbour! (Dad drops his tissue.)
32. YES, I'M GOING TO TAKE THIS TISSUE OFF THE FLOOR & SHAKE IT OUT & HOPE TO SHAKE ALL THE DUST & GERMS OFF & KEEP ON USING IT, BECAUSE I JUST DON'T BELIEVE IN WASTING THINGS!--And until you get as bad as me, I don't think you really deserve to run this outfit!--At least I don't think you'll run it as well as I have because you won't be as careful with every tiny thing. I used to be almost as bad as the old lady we knew who used to keep every paper bag, every string, everything in her house, the cupboards were just packed with them, but she also sent us $5 every month for about 10 years, faithful as she could be! She had a certain income from her property--stocks, bonds & whatnot--& she faithfully gave part of her tithe to us without missing a month! We could always count on a $5 cheque from dear Sister Keene of Umatilla, Florida. She was one of two old maid sisters that lived together, as I recall, but she was the only one who gave anything to us. And she was as saving as you could possibly imagine.
33. WELL, I'M NOT QUITE THAT BAD, I DON'T SAVE BITS OF STRING, ALTHOUGH I DO SAVE BITS OF WIRE & A SCREW & A NAIL HERE & THERE! God knows that if you are saving & you hate to see anything wasted that He can trust you with things that are really valuable, but not if you're careless & just throw things away. I've caught my boys several times just throwing things away & said, "Save that piece of wood. You might need a little block or piece of wood that shape or that size. Don't throw that piece of scrap metal away, you might need it for something. Don't throw that away! Have a scrap pile where you keep it so you'll have it next time when you're looking for something!" I keep a mental file of all that kind of stuff. I can tell you almost anything in my tool drawer. I've got little odds & ends & bits of pieces of things in there just in case one of these days I might need one, & every now & then I do.
34. YOU SAY, "YOU'RE BORDERING ON INSANITY! You're one of those crazy nuts I've heard about that saves every bit of string, paper bag, scraps of paper, rags, old bottles & whatnot!" I probably would have been a good Ragman! When I was a kid they used to go down the street every day, a guy who came by & yelled, "Any rags! Clothes! Ragman!"--Yelling at the top of his voice, I could hear him half-a-mile away! He had an old wagon pulled by an old flea-bitten donkey that would rattle down the street in Oakland, California when I was about five years old. I remember I'd always run to the window to see him & his donkey & sometimes we kids would go out there & pet his donkey's nose.
35. HE WAS A NICE FRIENDLY OLD MAN, some old foreigner, Italian or something, poor, but he found out he could make money off of old rags & bottles & bits of furniture & other junk people would give him. So I can remember as a little boy that I was always scolding my Mama, making sure she didn't throw anything away & that we saved a little cardboard box full of junk for the Ragman, bits & pieces of everything. Rocks & sand, he didn't ask for that, but rags & bottles & scrap metal & scrap furniture & whatever, I'd make sure that she never threw anything away. I always wanted to save it for the Ragman.
36. WELL, I'M STILL IN THE RAG BUSINESS! I'M STILL TRYING TO SAVE THE RAGS FOR THE BIG RAGMAN WHO IS GOING TO HOLD US ACCOUNTABLE FOR EVERY SINGLE WORD ONE OF THESE DAYS! (Mat.12:36,37) Now if He is going to hold you accountable for every word & every deed, He is also going to hold you accountable for every penny & every scrap of whatever you could have saved that might have come in handy or been useful! You say, "What do you mean, Dad? We've had to get up & walk off & forsake thousands of dollars of stuff!"--But we never did it without giving it to people, did we? We always tried to make sure someone got it, & mostly we gave it to the Family or other Families or other Homes, even sometimes carrying it to them at the risk of our security & our lives like we did a bunch of stuff we carried from Malta to the Home in Catania, Sicily, because we knew there was a Home there--heaters, lamps & all kinds of junk that we couldn't take on the airplane but we could take on the ferry to Catania. I want to tell you...
37. (TONGUES:) PYL! HALLELUJAH! TYJ! "LISTEN THOU, HEED THOU TO EVERY WORD OF THY FATHER & KEEP THEM AS VALUABLES & PRECIOUS, PRICELESS MORE THAN GOLD, that thou may know the ways of thy Father David, for they are the ways of thy Lord!" TYJ! PTL! Hallelujah! TYL! I'm sorry, I'm not a very good interpreter, but that's the gist of it. PTL! I hope you got it.
38. I THINK THE KIDS LIKE MY CRAZY TITLES!--WE CAN CALL THIS "THE RAGMAN!" I started off saving scraps, rags, old bottles, anything I thought was valuable, & you know how little kids are, they save anything if they think it's something valuable, almost trash! Well, I saved all that stuff & I made sure my Mother saved it, then whenever we had a boxful, I proudly carried it out to the Ragman & he really liked me! I think he even bought me a tamale one day when the tamale man came by, because he figured he had a good customer. Of course, a tamale only cost 5 cents, & boy, they were good!
39. I'LL NEVER FORGET THE TASTE OF THOSE TAMALES! I don't think I've ever eaten any Mexican food since then that tasted as good as those tamales! They weren't much bigger than my thumb, you know, a little bit of God-knows-what ground up inside, wrapped up in this cornmeal & then wrapped up in a corn husk. He kept them hot in the bottom of this little cart & he'd come down the street, & I've told you that before, yellin', "Tamales! Hot tamales! Hot tamales!" I think you can remember that, can't you? (Maria: Ha! Yes!) I wasn't talking about tamales when I was yelling that once-upon-a-time when dear little machine-gun-Ana was workin' away on me! God bless her, she was a hot tamale! But anyway, I like those hot tamales almost as much as I liked Guatemalan Ana! GBH! I don't think I ever saw a woman in my life that could rat-a-tat-tat like she did! She was a machine-gun moll! Anyway, praise the Lord! GBH! I understand she's had a few problems since then, but anyhow, she was sure good at sex! Maybe that's her problem, I don't know. But I love her anyway, God bless her!
40. BUT ANYHOW, THE HOT TAMALE MAN APPRECIATED ME & THE RAGMAN APPRECIATED ME, & THERE'RE NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO APPRECIATE A LITTLE FIVE-YEAR-OLD KID! Come to think of it, I think I was only about four, because I had my fifth birthday in Washington, D.C., & I don't think we went back there after that. Well, we did go back on business after that, so it could've been later, but it was when I was very small, about four I guess. Can you remember Techi a year ago at that age getting concerned about the garbage man or the trash man or the tamale man? I can!--If she'd have known he needed rags & bottles & tin cans & whatnot, she'd get to feelin' sorry for him & have compassion for him & want to save up everything she could & make us save stuff for the Ragman. I wonder if all our kids are being taught to be that saving & not throw anything away?
41. WELL ANYHOW, GOD'S THE RAGMAN & HE'S GOING TO BE VERY PARTICULAR ABOUT WHAT YOU SAVE & WHAT YOU GIVE TO HIM AS A RESULT, & WHAT YOU CAN GIVE TO HIM, YOUR CONCERN ABOUT SAVING THINGS SO THAT YOU HAVE ALL THE MORE TO GIVE TO HIM. I think I could say I loved that old Ragman, that funny ol' foreigner that rattled down the cobblestone street with his bangety-rattly ol' wagon. It wasn't even as big as those wagons you see in cowboy pictures. It wasn't much bigger than that desk! It just had enough room for his little donkey to get in between the staves there & it was about as deep as that desk is right there. But boy, he filled it up, he loaded it up & I suppose he went home & unloaded somewhere if he got full too quick & came back & started over again.
42. BUT I THINK I COULD SAY I LOVED HIM, THAT I REALLY WANTED TO HELP HIM! I had compassion, pity on him, pity on the poor even at that age! Maybe one reason for it was that we were so poor & we had been so poor most the time. Every little rag or thread or piece of paper was worth something! Let me tell you, you've got to value things, & most of all people!--Otherwise you're not fit to rule the Kingdom of God & God is going to hold you responsible for anything wasted!
43. THE ONLY MILLIONAIRE I REALLY KNEW IN MY LIFE BESIDES MY GRANDFATHER WAS A CLOSE FRIEND THAT WE OFTEN VISITED & LIVED WITH & HE VISITED US, & I'VE TOLD YOU ABOUT FRED SHULTZ, the cousin of Henry Ford. He liked quotes & his favourite quote was: "Anything wilfully wasted will be wilfully wanted!" If you waste it, some day you're going to need it & remember how you wasted it before & be sorry you wasted it! And he was a multi-millionaire, he owned millions of dollars' worth of property in the heart of Detroit & finally donated a big piece of property that was worth six million dollars--that was worth a lot of money in those days, worth about 60 million now--& built'm a school, the Detroit Bible Institute.
44. I WENT BACK THERE YEARS LATER AFTER I FOUND OUT WHAT CHRISTIANITY WAS REALLY LIKE & we had been to Fred Jordan's school, & we visited them & I really put him on the spot about his Bible College. By that time it got to be a college & I said, "Well, what are your students doing? All this money, millions of dollars you invested in that property & that school & all the rest, & what are they doing? How many souls are they winning?" I already had my little Soul Clinic School in Miami. I said, "How much witnessing do they do every day? How many souls do they win every day?"
45. I ASTOUNDED HIM BY TELLING HIM HOW MUCH WITNESSING MY LITTLE HANDFUL OF 40 PEOPLE DID & HOW MANY THEY WITNESSED TO EVERY DAY & HOW MANY SOULS THEY WON EVERY DAY! He said, "Well, my students are getting ready for the ministry." I said, "Well, when are they going to go into the ministry?" "Well, they've got to go through four years of college here first." I said, "Well, why don't they get out & win souls on the way? Why don't you have half-a-day of soul-winning every afternoon?--Or at least you could have it two or three days a week & they could be winning souls now! Why wait four years until they become preachers & pastors & missionaries in order to win souls?" Because I agree with Fred Jordan, any person that can stand to wait for four years of college & two or three more years of seminary, or cemetery, & then go into the ministry or to the mission field, if they haven't learned how to witness & win souls on the way, they never will! And if they had any fire to begin with they will have lost it by that time, if they'd cooped it up for four to six or seven years!
46. GOD SAVES TIME! HE'S CONCERNED ABOUT SAVING TIME AS WELL. God forgive us for the time we waste sometimes, but we should be trying to make every minute count. I hope these are counting. I hope maybe it'll help some people to save money, save people & to save time, because some day the Guy Upstairs Who is concerned even about saving rags is going to hold you accountable for any waste of money, people or time, & time is probably the most valuable thing we have besides people, that's for sure! It doesn't matter how many people you've got, if you haven't got time to do it, it can't be done. So time is important & I want to see you folks concerned about every penny, every minute & every person, every child, even babies! Are you investing everything you can in them & getting the most you can out of them for the Lord & for the Future? Now that's not what I came in here to talk to you about, but sort of!--Ha!
47. SO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR THE RAGMAN TODAY? HAVE YOU SAVED HIM ANY MONEY? HAVE YOU SAVED HIM ANY TIME? HAVE YOU SAVED HIM ANY PEOPLE & THEIR STRENGTH & THEIR LABOUR? Well, I've taken your time. You say, "Dad, if you'd let me get out of this damn long, drawn-out, long-winded meeting of yours, I could get out & do something & save some money, time & people! In fact, I've got a lot to do & I was supposed to do this & that!" But maybe you learned a lesson that'll help you! I've talked about these things before but I don't know if I ever said that about it.
48. YOU NEED TO START OUT AS A LITTLE CHILD SAVING & TEACH THESE LITTLE CHILDREN TO SAVE THINGS & TO BE CAREFUL WITH THINGS & NOT WASTE THINGS. When I make my coffee in the morning I set the cup on a napkin so that if I spill anything it won't go all over the place. Well, the other morning, I've forgotten whether it was a little coffee or a little powdered milk I spilled on the napkin, it didn't all quite hit the cup. Dear Techi was "helping" me to make my coffee & right away when I spilled it she wanted to help & she wanted to take the napkin. I started gathering up the napkin with the grains of, I've forgotten whether it was coffee or milk inside, & she was going to take it over & dump it in the wastebasket.
49. I SAID, "NO, NO, TECHI, IT'S NOT DIRTY! It's on a nice clean napkin here, I'll put it right back in my coffee!" "Oh, hm!" she pondered. It was like it was a new idea. I suppose somebody taught her to be clean & that if you spill something you should throw it away. But I don't, not if I spilled it on a clean surface or a clean napkin or even a clean tablecloth. You can brush it back into your food or back into your coffee or whatever. I've often dropped things on the floor that other people wouldn't touch then, they'd throw it away, but I pick it up, brush it off, wipe it off, blow it off or something & stick it back in my food or whatever!
50. NOW WHEN YOU GET THAT SAVING, MAYBE GOD CAN TRUST YOU WITH A BIGGER JOB!--And you'd better get that saving because He's got a bigger job for you! You need to learn how to save time & money & people if you're going to get this job done, even if it's only talking about how we're going to do the FN. And that's what started it all, I guess you know, no more stapling. Why do we have to staple the FN? People read newspapers, with as many pages as our FN & a lot more, but did you ever see a newspaper with staples in it?--And newspaper pages are several times as big as these. (We've since discovered that stapling is fast, inexpensive & more convenient for the Family.)
51. NOW I GRANT YOU THAT PEOPLE ARE MORE APT TO SAVE MAGAZINES THAN NEWSPAPERS, BUT WE'RE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT SAVING MONEY & PEOPLE'S HARD WORK & TIME! Why do they put two staples in instead of one? If they'd have just put one staple in this FN they could've saved all three: People, time & money! You say, "Oh Dad, it's hardly anything, it doesn't amount to anything!" Well, add up how much time it took to put in that one extra staple in every copy that they made for the last two years & figure out how much time, money & people we wasted that we could've spent on something else, that could have been better spent on something else that we really needed & had to have, & not an extra staple! In fact, I don't see why it needs staples at all! We're not going to put staples in our GNs or our WNDs any more, we're just going to fold'm, that's all. (Dad asks one of the girls if she's comfy & to come closer.) Now that's better, that's much better!
52. I BELIEVE IN SAVING PEOPLE & I BELIEVE IN LOVING THEM! I go around & kiss the girls & love'm up sometimes even when I don't feel like it, because I think they need it & they feel like it, believe it or not! I don't do it just for my sake. And I was so happy that they found me a nice verse to corroborate that I was Scriptural! What was it? (Fam: "Kings shall be their nursing fathers.") (Isa.49:23) Kings, I'd forgotten about that part.
53. I KNEW I'D SEEN "NURSING FATHERS" IN THE BIBLE & I NEVER COULD FIGURE OUT WHAT THAT MEANT. The preachers never could explain to me what a nursing father was, except that some of them claimed that from the pictures they saw in the old Egyptian hieroglyphics that maybe there was a time before male chauvinism entered in that even the fathers were able to nurse the children! Why else would you have two nipples on every man's chest? Maybe they just got out of the habit! Maybe they just kind of dwindled away because men didn't take care of the babies any more & didn't nurse them any more. That's been a theory some of them had, trying to explain to me what it meant by nursing fathers, & I forgot that it said that kings shall be your nursing fathers! And what else was it? (Fam: "And their queens shall be thy nursing mothers.")
54. I NEED A LITTLE NURSING EVERY DAY QUITE OFTEN & I TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO DO IT! TTL! That's what they're made for & that's what I use'm for! I haven't gotten out of the habit since I was a baby.--Except for many years I had to go without it, & that was a cryin' shame! I still regret the years that I didn't have any. I got used to it for about the first year of my life & then they take it away from you for the next 20-25 years! What a crime! I mean, that's terrible! Eskimos nurse their children until they're three or four years of age. [DELETED] But anyway, that's another subject. Excuse me. But that's what happens when you get too close to me, I might get off on that subject! All right, I guess that's enough.
55. WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY, & THIS IS BUSINESS, IS THAT WE NEED TO TRY TO DO THIS AS EASILY WITH AS LITTLE TIME & LABOUR & AS CHEAPLY AS POSSIBLE! Now the time & the labour I put first because both time & labour have to do with the labourer & the person who's doing the work, & I believe in saving men more than money! The last consideration is the expense, but that comes into it too because the more money we have to spend, the less money we have to use for men & labourers, women too, of course. I guess I'm still using the male chauvinist language that the Bible uses. I'm always saying man & mankind & men, but it includes women. Even brothers includes sisters in the Bible.
56. SO ON YOUR NEXT FIRST NEW COPY, NEW FORMAT, NEW METHOD, I WANT TO SEE HOW MUCH YOU'VE SAVED FOR THE RAGMAN, OK? And I want you to tell me how much less time it took you, how much you saved. Figure it out to the penny, to the minute, amen? I think at the present the only three publications that we can use this new method on are the GN, WND & FN. I've already started on the GN & the WND, & I was thinking & praying about it last night & early this morning about three or four o'clock & figured, "I've got to see our FN Editor first thing in the morning--talk it over with Peter first--& I want to know the score about the FN, why we can't do it this way too!"
57. IF YOU SAY WE CAN'T, THEN YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO PROVE TO ME WE CAN'T OR I'M GOING TO DO IT THIS WAY! Every stroke we save Sprint, every penny, every moment, every piece of paper, we're saving to be able to use for somebody else that needs it more, if we can save them from doing things they don't have to do & we don't need for them to do, in fact, some that we can do ourselves right here now! Somebody else can take part of the load because they're going to be overloaded. We don't know yet that it's going to work out but we're trying.
58. WELL, I'M SORRY, BUT MAYBE THIS TALK WAS WORTH IT! EVEN IF YOU LOST A FEW MINUTES TODAY, MAYBE YOU'LL SAVE SOME HOURS IN THE FUTURE & SOME DOLLARS & SOME PEOPLE! If you must have it stapled, at least you can just staple it once! But we don't have to staple it. Considering the fact that maybe lots of people don't need it stapled, why should we staple them all? If the people want them stapled, they can staple'm themselves. OK? All right!
59. YOU MAY BE MAD AT ME FOR TAKING YOUR TIME & DISGUSTED WITH SPENDING SO MUCH TIME ON SUCH INFINITESIMAL INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE THINGS LIKE THIS, BUT THAT'S WHY GOD COULD TRUST ME WITH THE FAMILY to get it started & organise it & run it & still be runnin' it, & why I'm still tryin' to teach you how to run it so you'll run it the way God has taught me how to run it, so it'll last as long as possible & accomplish as much as possible & the people will last as long as possible & the material will last as long as possible & the money will go as far as possible & the time will be stretched out as long as possible, 'cause we'll get more done in the same amount of time!
60. I ALMOST GOT FURIOUS AT OUR {\ul \i WND} MAN WHEN HE HANDED IN MY APPROVAL COPY OF THE NEW {\ul \i WND} FORMAT STAPLED! I just raised sand about it! He wasn't home or he'd have heard about it! He's probably heard about it by now, in fact, he wrote me a note of apology. He said, "I thought it would be nice to have yours stapled." But it's not nice & I don't like it stapled & I'd just as soon have it not stapled! When they're stapled, sometimes you just can't even lay'm out flat, especially the way he stapled'm! He stapled'm through this way 'cause he didn't have a big stapler & I couldn't even open it all the way. And as narrow margins as we're putting on'm now, Brother, if you can't open'm all the way you may not be able to read half of it!
61. THAT'S ANOTHER REASON! WE'RE GOING WALL-TO-WALL, BORDER-TO-BORDER, USING ALMOST EVERY POSSIBLE SQUARE MILLIMETER WE CAN FOR PRINTING SPACE! Therefore, we don't have to worry about what the printers are going to say about, "Well, you can't print that close to the spine because we've got to bind" blah blah, blah blah! We're not going to bind it, we're not going to have any spine! We're just going to print it & fold it, period, & that's it! No more stapling, binding, whatever, & no more little tiny things, a lot of little tiny pages that are a lot of trouble, but great big pages, as big as possible, that we can just fold up into letter-size & mail.--No staples, no binding, very little folding & fairly large pages that aren't going to cause so much trouble. Is that clear? (Fam: Yes, Sir!)
62. ALL THIS TO SAY THAT, OR THAT TO SAY THIS, THAT WE'RE GOING TO DO THE SAME THING WITH THE {\ul \i FN} & {\ul \i LIN} AS YOU'VE ALREADY SEEN US DOING WITH THE {\ul \i WND} & THE {\ul \i GN}! The GN is the kind of form that we're planning to put it in & leave it in. That first WND you may have gotten in those big copies with the pictures all different directions, but everything is going to be different next copy, we just did that in a hurry. We'll let'm see the worst one first & then they'll appreciate the better ones when they get'm! Those were designed for the little pages of the 64-page WND, we slapped'm on these big sheets & well, they fit! PTL! They'll probably think it's terrible & it looks horrible, but that Dad must have some reason for it, & they'll appreciate the next one, a vast improvement!
63. EVERY PRINT COPY THAT COMES I LOOK AT EVERY PAGE. I don't read every page, I've already read every page usually several times, but I look at the quality of the print & the pictures to see if it came out all right & I've caught'm a few times on some poor work--or at least their printers--& they had to get on'm about it, some problem they had.
64. SO WHEN THE FINAL PRINTED COPIES ARE DONE I CHECK EVERY COPY, EVERY PAGE, EVERY PICTURE, & I WANT TO CONTINUE TO GET THOSE so we can check the quality & the kind of work the printers are doing, & they'd better be good!
65. THOSE WORDS I JUST GOT THROUGH SAYING ARE THE SAVING ELEMENTS: SAVING TIME, SAVING MONEY & SAVING PEOPLE IF YOU MAKE IT EASIER, FASTER, & CHEAPER! What does easier represent? (Peter: Man-wise.) Faster? (Fam: Time.) Cheaper? (Peter: Money.) Right! OK, there you go.--How to save time, people & money, whatever order you want to put'm in. I think time is almost more important. You've got to have people in order to save time, & people are no good without time to do it. To save time, people & money--TPM--you've gotta make it faster, easier & cheaper!
66. SO NEXT TIME YOU THINK ABOUT THROWING SOMETHING AWAY OR CARELESSLY GOING AHEAD & giving somebody a job that is more than they really need to do or have to do or we need, or you pay more than you should've paid for something, think about the little four-year-old boy that ran out with his box full of junk to the Ragman every day or whenever we had some. OK? You remember the Ragman & the Ragman is going to appreciate it, because if there's any Ragman that's in the business of saving time, people & money, it's God! His major business is saving time & people, & in order to do that, sometimes you also have to save money. PTL?
67. LIKE SOPHIE THE SCRUBWOMAN SAID, "MY MONEY IS ME! I put my blood & sweat into that laundry & earned that money, so when I send it to the mission field, that's me! I'm going to those mission fields! It's part of me!" So even money is people, in a way, time & people. It's the money they earned with their time & their labour & it represents a part of their flesh & blood, their strength, their time. So the money is important, to save it, every penny, every stamp, & make that your responsibility. You have to worry about saving everything, including me!
68. THE LORD GIVES ME FUNNY LITTLE TITLES SOMETIMES THAT AROUSE YOUR CURIOSITY IF NOTHING ELSE: "What is this about the Ragman? What have we to do with rags? The Lord counts our self-righteousness as filthy rags, we don't like rags!" (Isa.64:6) But the Lord likes rags, did you know that? The Lord saves everything, even rags, & we'll even save rags too. If the rag is dirty, if the rag is soiled & putrefied or it's soiled with menstruation or something like that & it can't be used any more, can't even be washed, then we throw it away.
69. IN THE BIBLE IT SAYS THAT TO THE LORD OUR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS IS AS FILTHY RAGS, & ACTUALLY IN THE ORIGINAL IT SAYS MENSTRUOUS RAGS, & that's one kind of rags you throw away & you don't keep. There's nothing you can do with them. They're too soiled & too stinky to save, right? Now I don't know what they did in the old days before Kotexes & synthetics & all that, when they had to use cloth as rags, maybe in those days they were able to wash them afterwards. Maybe they couldn't afford to throw away every single rag, you know? But most rags, if washed or cleaned, can be reused for something. When it gets down to that, a torn part of a garment or an old handkerchief or an old piece of holey or unholey underwear, finally it can be used for a rag to wipe the floor or wipe up stuff & polish the furniture.
70. I DON'T THINK I NEED TO PRAY ON THIS SUBJECT, I'VE LEARNED MY LESSONS THROUGH 65 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN IT, STARTED ABOUT 61 YEARS AGO! Maybe I started before that, I don't know, savin' things for the Ragman. But maybe you guys need to each pray a little short prayer. Let's save a little time now & save you people, & who knows?--We might even be saving money if we cut this short. You're not heard for your much speaking & long prayers so let's be quick about it. I've said enough & let's pray quick. The Lord'll hear you & I just want to hear you too. OK? Ladies first!
71. (FAM: THANK YOU LORD FOR THESE LESSONS! LITTLE DROPS OF WATER & LITTLE GRAINS OF SAND THAT MAKE A BEAUTIFUL OCEAN & MARVELLOUS LAND! TYJ! Help us to learn them & forgive us for where we failed & help us to do better from this day on, in Jesus' name. Thank You for Thy Prophet & these Words of Truth, Lord, in Jesus' name.) TYJ! TYL! PTL!
72. (MARIA: THANK YOU LORD FOR THOSE BEAUTIFUL WORDS OF INSTRUCTION YOU CONTINUE TO REMIND US OF, & we want You to forgive us for not having done these things better, many of which we've known to do. But help us, Lord, & make us more faithful. We thank You for Your beautiful confirmations. The Words we heard today are Your Words, Lord, & what Thy servant David is like, what You are like, Lord, & we want to be like both him & You. So help us Lord, & help the Family, all of us, to take these lessons to heart & make them part of us so we'll be found faithful in Thy Kingdom, in Jesus' name, amen. TYL!)
73. (FAM: THANK YOU JESUS FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATION YOU'VE GIVEN OF YOU BEING LIKE THE RAGMAN. We pray that this lesson will really be ingrained into every fiber of our being, Jesus, as we know it's such an important one, & we certainly have more to save than any other people on the face of this Earth! We have Your souls to save & it's such a big job, so we know that each & every little thing we do has some bearing & effect on it, Jesus. We do pray, Lord, that we can be found faithful in all these things, even the littlest, Lord, as we know they have such great effects, Jesus. Thank You Lord that we can be able to learn these lessons & we do pray, Jesus, that You forgive us where we have failed, but help them to become new habits, Lord, in Jesus' name. TYL!)
74. (PETER: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THESE CHANGES THAT ARE SAVING US TIME & EFFORT & MONEY, LORD, SAVING OUR MAN-POWER & YOUR WORK, JESUS. We pray that You'll help us to take these lessons to heart & to be faithful in the little things so that we can be faithful in the big things, Lord. We know these are tests & You're showing us these new, quicker & easier ways, Lord, & ways to save, & we pray that You help us to pass these tests, Lord, & to really ingrain it into us & to really be able to pass it on to others in everything that we do each day. And Lord, we do ask that You forgive us for doing some things but leaving these other things undone & not being faithful to see them & to catch them beforehand, Lord. But we do ask for Your help now to do better in this & we thank You for Dad, who's been such a good example, Lord, all through his life & to all of us, Jesus. So we pray You'll help us to follow that now, in Jesus' name. TYL! PYJ!) Amen. PTL! Hallelujah!
75. DO HELP THESE PRECIOUS ONES WHO'VE BEEN SO FAITHFUL, LORD, & SO DILIGENT, WORKING SO HARD, LORD, & DOING THEIR BEST TO SAVE TIME, PEOPLE & MONEY IN EVERY WAY THEY POSSIBLY CAN. We just want'm to do even better, Lord, & save even more, because there's so little left of our time & even our people & we don't even know how much money, Lord, is really going to be left. So we're trying to use it all as best we can, as fast as we can & the easiest way possible so we can get the most out of it, Lord, for Thy kingdom. Help us, Lord! Help each one of us to be diligent & prayerful & careful about saving everything that needs to be saved so we can have more time, more people, more money, more strength & energy for things that are really needed & really have to be done, in Jesus' name we ask for Thy glory. Amen, Lord, so we can save souls most of all & save the World, or as much as we can, as many as we can. TYJ! PTL!
76. WELL, THE DEVIL'S A CLEVER OL' RASCAL & YOU KNOW WHAT PEOPLE'S NATURAL DEFENSE MECHANISM IS WHEN THEY GET PUT ON THE SPOT ABOUT SOMETHING or criticised or cautioned or warned or even scolded or whatever you want to call a little lecture like this. Do you know what your natural defense mechanism is? They say it's natural, which means it's carnal, which means it can also be of the Devil!--And it's to do what? What is our most automatic, natural self-defense? (Peter: To blame others? Pass the buck?) Pass the buck, blame others or even criticise me!
77. "NOW DAD, YOU WASTE A LOT OF TIME WATCHIN' VIDEOS! HOW CAN YOU WASTE ALL THAT TIME WHEN YOU THINK TIME'S SO VALUABLE?" Well, as Maria knows, I don't watch'm until I'm too tired to do anything else, & usually while I'm eating & after I eat I watch just till I get tired enough to go to sleep & take a nap. "Well, what about all that time you waste running around working on plumbing & toilets & crazy things like hanging up curtains & inventions & all that stuff that you do?"
78. I DON'T THINK THAT'S TIME WASTED! It's made a lot of improvements around the place & the absolute necessities to meet emergencies. I wonder if somebody's ever made a list of all the improvements I have generated & engineered, as well as all the inventions to do it with? I don't think it was time wasted. It was necessary in the first place & it helped others to learn how in the second place! I've not only been doing it & helping them do it, but teaching them how to do it so they can do the same things after I'm gone, on a lot bigger scale, & I've already talked about that. (No.1780) They can run whole cities if they know the basic principles of plumbing & sewage & water supply & electricity & a few other things like that. So I don't think that's time wasted.
79. SO IF YOU'RE TEMPTED TO LET THE DEVIL TELL YOU, "WELL, DAD WASTES TIME"--HOW ABOUT YOU? "Well, you waste money, you're extravagant, you buy things like videos" & blah blah! Well, what about you?--You waste people! You sit here wasting two or three hours of my time when I give these scoldings & conferences when I could be doing something better & more profitable! You say, "How about your saving some of our time & lettin' us go now?" (Maria: I don't think anybody says or even thinks that!) Well, I hope you don't!
80. WHEN I TAKE TIME TO BAWL YOU OUT OR SCOLD YOU OR TRY TO TEACH YOU, TRY TO INSTRUCT YOU, TRY TO HELP YOU, I HOPE YOU DON'T THINK I'M WASTING YOUR TIME & YOUR BODY! "Well, Dad, you waste bodies too, you go around wasting all the girls & wasting yourself on'm & wearing'm out & wearing yourself out!" Well, I need a certain amount of lovin' & sex, & I think they seem to also! They seem to enjoy it.--Not only that, they seem to need it & they seem to sort of miss it if I don't get around to it. I come sooner or later, one time or another, & believe it or not, I do it because I love'm & I like to encourage'm & make'm feel good & let'm know I love'm. So I'm not wasting people either that I know of. I don't know, I suppose I have sometime, there's always been sometime where I've wasted time, people or money in my lifetime, but I usually learned a good lesson out of it. Because I started out saving for the Ragman!--Do you?
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Dearest Dad, 7/84
I love you! Here is "Ragman" for your approval! Wow! What a good Letter & so convicting! TY for all these precious, priceless Words & lessons! This reminded me how when we were at the office in London I saved all the stamps that came in from everywhere, & about every two weeks I'd take them to a little old stamp man who would give me from 5 to 10 British pounds per plastic bag full, which I used for some extra needs & so on! I used to be amazed at how much he gave me for them!
Anyway, thank you so much for all these good reminders to be faithful in the little things! (Amen!)
I'm all excited to be working on this flood of new Letters! Your Words excite me & ignite me!!
Love & kisses, Your Sal xxx!!! (GBY!--Tx!--Love, D.)
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family